Welcome To Leave
by Fueled By French Fries
Summary: "'Go commit genocide,' they said. 'It'll be easy,' they said. Well, they can go suck a- we're here! Planet... Earth?" Slightly AU, more apparent in later chapters. Rated T for coarse language. DISCONTINUED. "Doctor Funtimes" is its spiritual successor.
1. The Nightmare Begins to Begin

This fanfiction's sort of an exploration of alternate universe fanfictions. In AUs, there's usually one big difference between the canon and the AU. To that, I say, why have one big difference when you can have several _smaller_ differences? I don't own Invader Zim, because if I did I wouldn't have made the decision to put it on Nickelodeon.

Difference #1: Irk is a police state. It shows.

* * *

This is the story of a terrible person named Zim, and he almost deserved it. Zim was a little green alien called an Irken who worked for a fast food restaurant on a planet called Foodcourtia, where he manned the cash register at Shloogorgh's. The cashier's job was simple: he sat at the register and pushed buttons. This is what the cashier was supposed to do every day of every month of every year, along with much, much janitorial work, as this was the only way the Control Brains that ruled the Irken empire thought he could be productive, for, as you see, this little shit had gone and fucked everyone's day up.

About a year ago, this little shit, once nothing more than another cadet, had proved himself to be one of the most competent soldiers in the Irken Empire. So vast was his fucking up of the enemy that he was being trained to be an invader, a rank no one below five feet tall had ever taken before. Under normal circumstances, he would be considered a subversion of the height hierarchy, proof that short people were worth so much more than waiting tables and shining shoes.

However, under these abnormal circumstances, this guy not only fucked up the enemy, he fucked up his own people. And it kind of pissed them off.

But because of the Control Brains' interest, they could not kill him. And because of the Control Brains' interest, they hated him all the more. When the Tallest spoke to him, he was scolded for speaking back. When the Tallest touched him, he was reprimanded for soiling his flesh. Hell, if the Tallest pissed in his drink, he'd probably get the shit beaten out of him for letting his unworthy face near the Almighty Tallest's holy piss.

So done was he that he lost all his ability to can, and in doing so, just fucked all of his fellow invaders up.

Productivity, conformity, stability, the original manifesto went. However, the original manifesto, as it had been first written, had been lost for hundreds of years, and was actually buried under a pile of snacks in someone's closet, but that was beside the point. The point is, as most people would, he considered it soul-rending, hating every moment that a customer walked up to him. And Zim was not happy.

If you've read beyond that point, then you're either bored, given up hope on finding better fanfiction, or hoping that somehow, in some way, that little green alien will spontaneously learn to love. This paragraph's here to tell you that that's not going to happen, but hey, what can you do?

One day, something very peculiar happened- something that would forever change Zim. Something he would never quite forget. He was taking his break, having to flop into a chair after a horrible adventure with a toilet monster that he was pretty damn sure was the Shloogorgh mascot, and had turned on the TV to hear this:

"You've just tuned in, you're watching live as the crowd gathers on Conventia to watch the Great Assigning for Operation Impending Doom II!" An announcer boomed as the screen switched to a few invaders munching on nachos from a vat. "Ooh, looks like the crowd is being treated to nachos!"

"Impending Doom II?" Hey, he'd been in the first Impending Doom! He had to be there! …Well, it was kind of his fault that there needed to be a second one, but he didn't like to dwell on that. He leapt up, knocking over a mop bucket, but disregarded the mess. "I'll be late! I've gotta get out of here!"

He ripped off his Shloogorgh's uniform to reveal that he'd been constantly wearing his old invader's uniform, which didn't really matter that much because it wasn't like he'd get any bigger. "Nachos!" He screeched as he bolted out the back door.

The door to the break room creaked open as Zim's boss, a towering, greasy frylord lumbered in. He walked up to the puddle that the mop bucket had spilled and picked up the mop.

"Nobody escapes from Sizz-Lorr," he growled as he glared at the open back door. A great screaming came across the sky in Foodcourtia: "I will _find_ you, Zim! I will search all of space's dark corners to _HUNT YOU DOWN! AND I WILL FIND YOU!_" Everyone on the planet momentarily shivered in fear, except for the people who actually witnessed the incident, who simply wondered why he didn't just go after the escaped war criminal himself. Hell, why didn't _they_ do anything? It was a mystery that would haunt them all.

* * *

"Welcome, brave Irken soldiers," the announcer… announced. "Welcome to Conventia, the convention hall planet. Please proceed to the docking ring and take the complimentary teleporters to the planet's surface!"

Irken ships crowded to Conventia, parking in the artificial ring around the pink planet, then teleporting their pilots to the surface of the planet through warp streams. Swarms of Irkens poured into a convention hall with a giant cartoon-y robot sitting on the entrance chanting "Galactic conquest is here!" as monitors hover above the city displaying the announcer.

"Be sure to visit the gift shop for all kinds of cheap, useless stuff! If you're here for the Great Assigning, please remember where you parked and proceed to the convention hall!"

Irken Security monitored the crowd on hovering pods, x-raying everyone coming in. On the stage at the front of the convention hall was a disk-shaped metal pod. Electric currents charged between the ceiling and the pod, lighting the hall. The Irken invaders stood on a platform curved around the back of the metal pod, some looking surprised, some not. The former were probably the ones that were just scraped out of the academy, the latter being the ones that had lived through the first Great Assigning. The monitors displaying the Conventia Announcer hovered over to the sides of the pod.

"Now, wiggle your antennae in salute, because here they are! Your all-knowing, all-powerful leaders, the almighty Tallest!" He declared as he introduced a completely optional to read paragraph.

A spotlight shone down from the ceiling. The pod opened up, emitting smoke. The Irkens proceeded to wiggle their antennae in salute toward their leaders. The top half of the pod began to rise to the ceiling as small floating spheres emerged from the bottom half of the pod and rose above the audience. The metal spheres emitted lasers in all directions, which probably blinded a couple of people. Two posts lowered from the ceiling pod, which creates a holograph between them, distracting from the hover disk that detached from the bottom of the ceiling pod. It lowered downwards, with the towering, almighty Tallests, conveniently color-coded red and purple- also _named_ Red and Purple for whatever reason- standing on it. The Tallest waved and the disk emitted lasers from the rim. The audience cheered.

Okay, after that hot mess of transcript copying, Purple started shouting and waving at the crowd. "Thank you! Thank you!"

"See, told you they'd love the lasers," Red remarked under his breath.

Purple restarted the argument that they had started earlier backstage, momentarily forgetting that he was speaking at full volume. "Everything is _lasers_ with you! I'm telling you smoke machines are what the people really- _ARGH!_" He said, cutting himself off as a laser beam hit him in the eye. As he fell over, screaming in pain, the audience cheered some more, because Irkens don't really give a fuck if anyone dies or if they're in pain.

"See?"

The platform landed on the lower half of the pod. Purple got back up and rubbed his eye as Red started up his speech.

"Welcome, mighty Irken soldiers! You are the finest examples of military training the Irken army has to offer! Good for you. Standing behind us, however, are the soldiers we've chosen for roles in one of the most crucial parts of _Operation Impending Doom II!_"

The hologram behind them went from a blank screen to that of a gargantuan galactic map, marking planets for conquest.

"You in the audience just sit and watch," he chuckled.

"You should have tried harder!" Purple shouted into the crowd.

"These _superior_ ones-"

"-Not _quite_ as superior as us, of course!"

"Pfffft, duh! These _less superior than us_\- but still quite superior- soldiers will each be assigned to _enemy planet!_"

They turned to address the invaders themselves, rather than the crowd. "There, you will blend in with the hideous native inhabitants…"

"All while gathering crucial information, assessing the planet's weaknesses, making it _vul-ner-a-ble_ to our…" Fuck, Red had forgotten the word. Fuck. "Big… spaceship… gang!" Yep. Nailed it. Smooth.

"The _Armada?_ Now, _**let the assigning begin!**_"

The crowd was completely silent. Then some asshole in the back made it _more_ awkward by just yelling "woooo!"

Um. Well, then. "Step forward, Invader Larb," Red said flatly.

Larb hopped up onto the pod, then walked up a little ramp to stand before the Tallests.

"Ah! You seem to have grown since last you stood before us, soldier!"

"You've been assigned to the planet Blorch!" Purple told him as he tapped Blorch on the map, pulling up a picture of Larb being attacked by giant, rabid rats. "Home of the slaughtering rat people!"

"Why would you _draw_ that?" Larb asked as he started tearing up.

"However, because of your increased height, we have decided to give you the planet Vort-" Red said as he tapped the screen again, changing the picture to a picture of Larb relaxing on a huge couch. "Home of the galaxy's most comfortable couch." I don't know where he got that picture! I really don't fucking know! It sounded like they just changed his assignment on a whim, but drawing that takes time! If they planned that ahead of time, did they just tell him that he was supposed to go to the horrible planet of rats for goddamn _fun?_ Tap-dancing Christ, what did I tell you people about Irkens not giving a fuck about anyone else's wellbeing?

"Yes!" He took his assignment sheet from Purple before sliding away joyfully.

"Next, Invader Spleen!"

As Spleen stumbles up, both Tallests emitted an "Ooooooh!" They seemed impressed by his enormous, swollen head that kind of made it hard to walk due to the top-heaviness. Meanwhile, just above Conventia, a trashed Voot flew towards the docking ring as a green munchkin road rages.

"Move it, move it! Invader coming through! Move it! Argh, move it! Get out of the way!"

"And last…" Purple peered into folded, gauntlet-clad hands to look at a smudged note scribbled inside. "Invader… Skbudge!"

A tiny, chubby invader with a stained shirt and broken, consequentially sharp teeth walked up. "Invader Skoodge, reporting for duty!"

"Oh, now that's just sad," Red grumbled.

"Could you _get_ any shorter?"

"You will be assigned to Blorch, home of the slaughtering rat people. Thank you."

A picture of Invader Skoodge being attacked by rat people appears on the screen, further affirming the Tallests' jackassery. Skoodge tears up, appropriately, as one of Irk's most infamous criminals pushed his way to the stage and security tailed behind. Frankly, I'm not sure why nobody noticed in canon. "Get out of the way! Move it, move it! Get out of my way! Move! You're in my way!"

"Thus concludes the Great Assigning!" Zim continued to scream and shove through the crowd. "Help yourselves to some nachos, and we'll see you at the equipping station."

"Yes, gorge yourselves, you moochers!"

"No, no, no! Wait!" The munchkin yelled, waving an arm from the front of the crowd, almost on the stage.

"That voice!" Red exclaimed as Zim crawled onstage.

"It can't be!"

Zim reared his head up to look at them.

"_ZIM!_"

"HEY, HOLD YOUR FIRE! Calm your antennae, I haven't seen so many guns since that Vortian wedding ambush!"

The entire audience had panicked, pulling their lasers, as every good Irken citizen was armed at all times. Zim walked up to the Tallest as Skoodge slowly backed away from him, going back to his place.

"Sorry I'm late, my Tallest. I couldn't find my invitation. You're lucky I made it at all."

"You weren't _invited_ at all!"

"Weren't you banished to Foodcourtia? Shouldn't you be… frying something?" Purple sighed, he and his comrade looking down on the exile as if they were wondering what the fuck they just stepped in and why it was talking. Oddly enough, they were also the only ones there who didn't draw their guns.

"Oh, I quit when I found out about this." True, true.

"You _quit_ being _banished?_" Purple said.

"The Assigning is over, Zim!"

"But you can't have an invasion without me! I was in Operation Impending Doom I! Don't you remember?"

"Oh, yes… we remember…"

A year earlier, on planet Irk, explosions blew half of the empire's capital to smithereens. As sirens went off, a Frontline Battle Mech wandered around, shooting haphazardly. In the cockpit, Zim- who the fuck else?- pulled levers while laughing maniacally. Some other operators of the mech were starting to question his methods.

"But sir, we're still on our own planet!"

"Silence! Twist those knobs, twist those knobs! You! Pull some levers! Pull some levers!"

They obeyed disdainfully, knowing that you should never tell defective Irkens that you want to haul ass. Them fuckers can smell fear. The Tallest watched speechlessly from a building as the mech stepped on everything in sight.

In the present day, Zim attempted to justify the flattening of half of his fellow invaders with "I put the fires out!" (The defense did not work, not because it was a flimsy excuse, but because "You made them _worse!_" "Worse? …Or _better?_")

Purple tried to discourage him further. "Besides, Zim, no invader has ever been so… very small. You're very small, Zim. You're a… tiny _thing._"

"But- hey, hey, could you not point those quite so close to my eye?" He yelled, turning to the security drones and their red laser pointers. "Invader's blood marches through my veins! Like _giant radioACTIVE RUBBER PANTS!_" It was ants, you idiot! You can't hear me, can you? Being the narrator is a shittier job than I expected. "The pants command me! _Do not ignore my veins!_" Yep, there he goes.

"As a… show of gratitude for your service in the past… eh, here's a sandwich," Red grumbled as he pulled a sandwich out of hell knows where.

"But!"

"Thanks for coming, everybody, good night!"

"No! No, no, _wait!_"

"Whaaat? You got your sandwich!"

"My Tallests, an opportunity to prove I truly can be an _invaaadeeer_ is all that I ask! Gimme!" He hugged the sandwich of questionable origin.

Red paused, then whispered to Purple, "Hold on, I've got a plan," before turning back to Zim. "We see now that you are _truly_ deserving!"

"Yes. Yes, I am."

"You will be sent to a planet so mysterious, no one has even _heard_ of it!"

"And those who have heard of it _dare not speak its name!_" Purple agreed, fully aware that they were probably sending him to a planet of broken glass, or maybe one of those exploding head planets.

"What's its name?"

"Oh, I dare not speak it!"

"Where is it?" Zim asked, looking skeptical. Which meant that they were doing a pretty terrible job. If you're bad enough of a liar that you don't even fool Zim, you probably deserve a _medal_ for being so shitty.

"Um…" Red muttered, hovering around the hologram, looking for a nasty-looking planet. "Uh… um… right there!" He exclaimed, pointing at a sticky note on the side of the map that had a little circle with a question mark and said "planet?" on it. If it existed, it had to be tiny, revolved around a pretty damn hot sun, and probably wouldn't be habitable unless it had copious amounts of water, which would be deadly to Irkens, anyhow. Besides, it was far enough away from the capital that he couldn't cause any damage.

"Ooooooh! A _secret_ mission!"

"Happy now?"

"Yes."

"Invaders! Report to the equipment hall! Oh, and remember! Lasers."

A laser hit Purple in the eye again, causing him to drop back onto the floor, screaming.

"The universe will be ours for the taking! It's only a matter of time before all the races of the universe serve _the Irken Empire!_"

"I'll have them serve me curly fries," Purple mumbled as he got back up.

* * *

Meanwhile, light-years away, on a tiny, habitable planet that revolved around a pretty damn hot sun and had copious amounts of water, a kid was sitting on his roof, listening to aliens talk of many things, of rats and planets and sandwiches, of invaders and kings.

Dib pulled his headphones off, setting it next to his makeshift satellite. "They're coming!"

He jumped off the roof and slid down a pipe as his younger sister opened the refrigerator inside. "Dib drank the last soda. He will pay!" Dib swung into an open window, where he fell into the sink.

"They're coming!" He jumped out of the sink and ran to his father, Professor Membrane. Where was his mother during all this? I could probably tell you right now, but I'll burn that bridge when I get to it. "Dad! They're coming! I heard them! I actually heard them! I was up on the roof, and I heard this transmission that was coming through!"

"Shhshhshh! Not now, son! I'm makiiing…" Sparks of electricity flew from whatever the fuck he was doing. "_TOAST!_" He screeched, lifting up a piece of toast like it was goddamn Simba from the Lion King. He then realized that he somehow burned the toast, and proceeded to throw it out the window. Maybe the Lion King was not the best analogy. Is there a musical about abortions? If there isn't, I'm writing one myself. Perhaps name it "Bye-Bye Baby."

Dib ran over to his sister, who was drinking juice, since Dib drank the last soda. "Gaz! They're coming! They really are!"

Gaz sighed, wondering if her brother had forgotten his medication. "_Who's_ coming, Dib?"

"I don't know…" Dib said, looking out the window.

* * *

Back on Conventia, the invaders had reported to the equipment hall and were huddled around the Tallests. Purple put a compact robot on the ground which unfolded into a little android about two feet tall.

"This is your standard issue information retrieval unit, also known as a SIR. It will assist you in collecting valuable knowledge during your mission."

"It's also a thermos!"

Purple picked up the SIR, looking like he was about to chuck it at somebody. "WHO WANTS THIS ONE?"

Tenn spoke up from the back, screaming "I do!" before Purple did exactly what was described in the previous paragraph. "Ow! Thank you." This is not the only unfortunate event that Tenn will experience involving SIR units in this story, but that's a matter for another episode.

"Everyone else, line up and take a robot."

The invaders lined up in front of a conveyer belt with several compact SIR units hung on it. Larb stepped up, taking a unit, which unfolded and got to its feet.

"SIR! Go warm up my ship's engines."

"Yes master, I obey!" The unit shouted as it and Larb walked off. Zim stepped up, despite the fact that he was supposed to be fourth or fifth in line.

"Finally! A robot slave of my own!" He said as he reached for a SIR.

Red quickly intervened, not wanting to waste any functioning SIR units- those things were expensive. "Um, we have a 'top-secret' model for you, Zim."

Red and Purple turned their backs on him, before Red started rummaging through a trash can for some broken SIR parts. Purple pulled some pocket junk from, once again, hell knows where. Red put together some eyes and a head he found in the trash as Purple dumped the junk in to serve as a brain. Purple made a weird pigeon noise and tossed the shoddy robot in front of Zim. It laid there, as inanimate objects are wont to do.

"It looks kind of… not good-"

"Yes, well, that's what the enemy will think!" Purple insisted as Red nodded in agreement. "Get it?"

"I see! Very good! It even fooled _meee!_ I am honored to be trusted with such advanced technology!"

The Tallests giggled to themselves, before the robot suddenly activated with glowing red eyes and ran up to Zim.

"GIR, reporting for duty!"

"GIR? What does the 'G' stand for?"

GIR's eyes turned blue with realization, or lack thereof. "I don't know!" He stood there, despite now being an animate object. He then hit himself in the head repeatedly.

"Wheee hoo hoo hoo!"

"Um, is it supposed to be… stupid?"

"It's not stupid. It's advaaanced!"

GIR bounced on his head, as the Tallests continued to snicker.

* * *

As the invaders left Conventia to begin their undercover operations, Zim's voot cruiser separated from the rest and headed into the coordinates that were plugged in, unknowingly going in the direction of Earth.

"Okay, GIR! Our mission begins now! Let us rain some doom down upon the filthy heads of our doomed enemies!"

"I'm gonna sing the doom song now! Doom doom doom doo doom doom," the robot sang, and so on and so forth as they zoomed off toward their new home.

* * *

I couldn't decide if I wanted to write like a serious narrator or like a foulmouthed bitch, so I did both. Alright, that's the end of this chapter, so be sure to review the fic, and follow the fic if you want to see chapters similar to this one. See you.


	2. The Nightmare Continues to Begin

This is the chapter where things start diverging from canon. Buckle up, and I don't own Invader Zim, but I do own a very nice looking cactus, which is pretty much the same thing, but quieter!

Difference #2: Dib is actually schizophrenic. It doesn't show often because he takes his meds.

* * *

"…Doom! Doom doom doo doom doooooom!"

It had been six months.

SIX. MONTHS. WITH THAT GODAWFUL SONG. Where did that thing keep all of that energy?

On the bright side, all of the muscle relaxants and tranquilizers that had been in Zim's food during his little stay on Foodcourtia had worn off, finally enabling him to think. To think! Oh, and to plan.

"Doom doom doo-doom!"

Well, not think _that_ clearly.

"GIR… would you… stop… singing." No signs of GIR slowing down any time soon. "'Go commit genocide,' they said. 'It'll be easy,' they said. Well, they can go suck a-"

Right as Zim was reaching over to strangle the little bugger, the voot's controls flashed. "Proximity warning: planet ahead."

"GIR! We're here! Finally!"

GIR held up a finger. "Doom doom doom the end! Ooh, what's that?"

"Planet… Earth!" Zim read off the information panel. "This must be the place! Okay, first, we need a base of operations."

"Hee-hee!"

"Focus, GIR! This is where your information gathering skills will come in handy."

"Yes, my master!" GIR said as his eyes started turning red again, but quickly flashed back to blue as he pressed himself against the voot's windshield. It descended through some clouds, getting closer to the ground.

"You have to observe what these… earthinoids… call 'normal.' Then, based on your observations, we make our disguises, and our home."

The voot sped toward a large, but eerily empty city indicated by a flickering neon sign that read "Welcome to Leave!" As in, welcome to the town of Leave, Michigan.

As they flew by, they passed over things like plastic flamingos, the 105.5 FM Wake the Fuck Up radio station, a lawn gnome, and multiple dark houses, before stopping at a gap between two houses and lowering into it creating a cloud of dust.

"Here! We build here!"

Zim marched out of the voot with a fairly serious expression, which was rather quickly wiped off of his face. "Whew! That was easy! GIR, what did you learn?"

"I saw a squirrel!" …What in the chicken fried fuck? "It was doin' like this!" GIR made some weird squirrel noises, which was pretty much the point where Zim realized that this thing was fucking useless.

"Concentrate, GIR! It's time for disguises!"

"I want to be a mongoose!"

"Shh! Quiet."

The voot started setting up to create the disguises. Zim looked around on the control panel for some disguises, including Jhonen Vasquez.

"Too ugly! Too stinky! That one looks good," he finally said, pointing at a picture of himself with contact lenses and a toupee. The voot opens up, enclosing him in an egg-shaped pod. "Augh! Why does it hurt?"

He emerged, looking like the misbegotten child of Elvis Presley and Larry the cucumber.

"Master? Master, where'd you go?"

"I'm right here, GIR! It's me! And keep it down, are you trying to wake up the whole planet?"

"Yes."

"For you, I'm thinking, maybe, a dog."

"Can I be a mongoose dog?"

Zim choose a disguise before pushing GIR forward. "Today… we become… the enemy!"

The pod closed around GIR, made an ominous shaking sound. It opened to reveal… a fucking green dog. _Perfect,_ Zim thought. _Beautiful!_ No. No, Zim.

"Ingenious! Now, all we need is a home!"

He pulled out a capsule that unfolded into a drawing tablet and a pen. Zim started doodling a house on it that might have looked fine… if, firstly, he'd colored the house himself and not let the tablet do the work, and secondly, lived in the 50s. "Some windows, a couple of little animal things in front. There!"

He collapsed the pad back into a capsule, which ejected a drill out of the end. After pushing the capsule into the dirt and letting the drill do the rest, he scrambled behind a fire hydrant and called out "GIR, hide!"

GIR simply squeaked his merry way over to the sidewalk.

A house grew out of the ground. That's really the only way it can be described without typing excessively. First the framework, then green walls and a purple roof. A fence and lawn ornaments sprouted from the dirt, while an underground lab expanded downward. Tubes shot out of the sides of the house, attaching to the neighbors' houses and stealing whatever electricity that they were using.

Some lights in the neighborhood turned on, but not many, as this was the quiet side of Leave. Babies cried, car alarms went off, someone screamed "my car!" Zim disregarded all this, choosing to stride toward the front door.

"Welcome home, son!" A pair of badly disguised robots exclaimed as he opened the door.

He paused. "Whoo! Step one went smoooothly."

He marched through the house, stopping in the kitchen to flush himself down the toilet. The toilet dropped him into an elevator, which he chose to monologue in.

"The Tallests were wise to choose me," he said to no one in particular. "This planet won't know what hit it after I've learned its weakness- ow, these lenses are all scratchy!"

The elevator opened to a cockpit-like area with a computer- merely temporary until the rest of the lab was set up. The base was finished outwardly, but was still growing underground. He proceeded to type with the keyboard, intent on finding info.

"Now, to find the best possible way of 'learning' about this sad, filthy little planet. The more we know, the sooner we can conquer this spinning ball of… filthy… ugh! …Dirt."

* * *

The next morning, Ms. Bitters stood in front of her class, introducing the new kid.

"Class, I would like to introduce the newest, hopeless appendage to the student body. His name is Zim. Zim, if you have something to say, say it now, because after this moment, I don't want to hear another sound from you!" She hissed before slithering back to her desk.

"Hello, friends. I am a perfectly normal human worm baby," he said as his classmates looked tired and uninteresting, except for Dib, who pointed at him accusingly. "You have nothing, absolutely nooothing to fear from me. Just pay no attention to me and we'll get along just fine."

"Take your seat now, Zim." Zim walked with his arms outstretched in pride to an empty desk. "Today's lecture is about outer space… and how it will eventually _implode in on itself!_"

Zim waved his arms in the air.

"Yes, Zim?"

"Two questions. In the event of, say, a full-scale alien invasion, how prepared do you think this planet's defenses would be? Teeell me."

Ms. Bitter paused. "As I was saying, the universe is just doomed. Doomed, doomed, doomed!" Et cetera, et cetera. She only stopped when she left to get some more coffee.

Dib finally spoke up. "Okay, am I the only one here who sees the alien sitting in class?" The students looked around, clueless. "There! Right there!"

Zim sweated. As a member of a military organization, pointing fingers made him very nervous. "That's no kid! That's an alien! An alien! One of the monsters I've been talking about!" He quickly pressed a button on his sleeve, revealing a self-destruct button. Well, nice knowing me, he thought. "He's here to conquer Earth!"

The girl behind him objected. "Aw, not this again. You're crazy!" Some other students whispered things like "schizo" and "must be off his meds." Zim relaxed and booped away the button. No one would believe this kid.

"What about his horrible green head!" Dib yelled, getting up.

"Insolent fool boy! It's a skin condition."

"And he's got no ears! Is that part of your 'skin condition,' Zim? No ears?"

Zim looked embarrassed, which he'd practiced in the mirror a few hours beforehand. "Yes."

The student looked at him angrily. One boy said, "Man, Dib. You think that just 'cause someone's different, you can call them an alien?"

Another one commented, "I guess you and Old Kid are aliens too, huh?"

"How's it going?" Old Kid called from the back.

Dib dashed for the board, then sketched a man labeled "our people" and then an Irken labeled "not our people."

"Okay, see, this is us-" He pointed to the man. "-now over here, over here is Zim," he said, pointing to the alien. "See the difference? Anyone? Anyone? Questions?"

Zim had one, how did he know what an Irken looked like? He and his people were none of that boy's business! At least nobody believed him.

"Yeah, what's wrong with you?" Another classmate replied. "All you talk about is aliens and ghosts and seeing Bigfoot in your garage."

"He was using _the belt sander!_"

"Yeaaah, he's always saying stuff. I remember that one time-"

"Hey, you just got here! Don't let him trick you! I know what I'm talking about, and it's sitting _right there!_"

"Well, he does look pretty… weird." Oh, no.

"Yeah! And he is _sitting!_" Oh, _hell fucking no!_

"You see? Actual proof that all the things I've been saying are actually right! Finally, a way to prove that I'm- that I'm-"

"I'm crazy!" Zim muttered, mocking Dib.

"Now that makes sense," the girl behind him remarked.

"Man, we almost believed him!"

Black bars appeared above and below Dib's face, making it appear widescreen as he stared at Zim.

"What are you doing?" Ms. Bitters had returned with her coffee.

Dib put down his black textbooks, which he had been holding around his face. "Um, letterboxing. It's dramatic."

"Sit down."

As he did so, Zim raised his hands again. "You didn't answer my second question."

Ms. Bitters sighed. "Make it quick, the bell's about to ring."

"I found this in the bathroom, what is it, and is it explosive or flammable?" Zim held up a plastic baggie with something green inside.

"Do I need to call the police on you, young man?" Shit, he'd done something illegal? His classmates were doing an awful lot of giggling for some reason, and the girl behind him had made an "oooooooh!" sound.

"No, no. These are, um, grass clippings! I see it now."

"The bag says 'marijuana' on it in capital letters."

Zim's blood pumping organ skipped a beat.

"That is my nickname."

* * *

The bell rang and students rushed out of the Skool, some even climbing out of the windows to escape. Zim slowly went down the front steps, nearly walking out into traffic before somebody caught him.

"Hey! I can't expose you to the world if you get hit by a car!" Dib snapped, hanging onto his collar.

"What is a car?"

"Should've let him cross," Gaz snickered, not looking up from her Gameslave. "Thin out the herd."

"Let go of me, earthboy!"

"You think your cruddy little disguise can fool everyone, but I know the truth!" Dib wasn't letting go of him.

"No one will believe you."

"They'll believe if they see you without your disguise!" Dib pulled some odd-looking handcuffs out of his jacket, which his classmates had seen in there whenever he gesticulated too much. But they never said anything about it because, hey, his personal life was his own business. "I ordered this from one of my UFO-zines."

"Ooh, pretty. What is it?"

"Sleep cuffs. Guaranteed to render anything with a brain unconscious."

_So it doesn't work on humans, _Zim thought, unaware that his thought was such a great burn that he'd probably have to call a hospital. "How do you know if they work?"

Pause. "I'm going to find out right now!"

He attempted to jump Zim, but missed, letting him run off. The two dashed down the street. "Leave me alone! I just want to go home and be normal!" He made it into an alleyway, grabbing a bra on a clothesline and slid down, only to see that Dib had somehow wound up on the other side. He let go of the bra, falling into a crate of oranges and slowing Dib down significantly, along with snagging the bra on Dib's pointy hair.

Okay, home was only a block or so away. He could do this. In the middle of an otherwise rather quiet street, he grabbed one of those "car" things and climbed to the top of a fake ice cream cone. Through speakers, the "car" boomed that people's existence were meaningless without ice cream.

Leave was a very odd town.

Dib attempted to follow him on the street as Zim jumped onto a passing school bus. Unfortunately for him, that was when the tube of screaming children approached a stop light. Dib followed suit, scaling the side of the bus and approaching him with the sleep cuffs.

"Maybe they'll name your autopsy video after _me!_"

Suddenly, the traffic light turned green, launching Zim off of the roof of the bus and onto a fence. Hey, he was alive! "Ha! See you, Dib! Pitiful huuuuman- augh!" He was cut off by a rampaging dog attacking him.

Dib hopped off of the bus and ran across the narrow rail without hesitation. Jesus, this kid must've been in the circus or something. Like, I understand that Zim could do that because he has military training, but the other guy has no excuse!

Zim crawled out of a bush, looking a bit beaten up, but an encounter with a guard dog could've gone worse. While Dib was looking around in the bushes for Zim, because he had to come up for air at some point, Zim pushed him off of the fence and took his place.

Zim opened his communicator and yelled into "GIR! I don't have much time, get over here!"

"Yes sir!" Seconds later, GIR was hovering next to him via some kind of jet propulsion.

"Get me out of here now, GIR, now!"

"Okeedookie!" He squealed before putting Zim on his back.

"Wait a minute- what are you- what the- _AAAAAH!_"

In the same timespan that it had taken GIR to get to Zim, they hit the door of his house.

"Good work, GIR," he mumbled, adjusting his weird pompadour thing.

"_There_ you are!"

Oh. Oh shit, he knew where they lived now! "GIR! Get inside! Hurry!"

"Welcome home, son!" The roboparents announced as they rushed themselves inside. Dib looked fucking pissed, what with being beaten up, dirty, and having a bra on his head.

"You can't hide forever!" They heard him through the door. "And if you can… then I'll _wait_ forever! I've been preparing for this my whooole _life_-" He was cut off by a gnome vaporizing his sleep cuffs, leaving him holding nothing but a bra. "…I'm going to go home and… prepare some more!"

"I feel good about today!" He said cheerfully. Good for him, because he was probably the only major character that did so at the moment.

* * *

On the Massive, the Irken armada's flagship, the pilots were going about their business, measuring speed and core temperature and radiation levels and countless other variables when a call came in.

"Incoming transmission from… _Earth?_"

"What is… Earth?" Tallest Purple wondered.

The pilots answered the transmission, which put Zim's face on the screen, calling from the newly constructed lab. "Invader Zim reporting, sirs. The mission goes well. But surely you expected that from me."

Purple's jaw came unhinged; Red dropped a perfectly good soda. "Zim? You're alive?"

"Yes. So very alive!"

"Hello!" GIR said, peeking his head into the top of the screen. The robot was okay, too? They didn't think that thing would activate, much less last for more than five minutes!

"And full of goo! Miiision goo! Don't be surprised if I take care of the humans before the armada even gets here! Well, I've much work to do, so: Invader Zim, signing off!" GIR fell from whatever he was holding onto, crashing onto Zim. "Oh, my spine!"

Red and Purple glanced at each other in disbelief.

"Hey, you've got another call from Therockia!"

"What, the prisoner of war planet? What do they want?" Red asked.

"Only one way to find out," Purple sighed, hoping that this wouldn't be more bad news.

What appeared on the screen was a prison, roughly. Prisoners were rioting and attempting to scale the walls, as a good chunk of the roof had been blown off by a bomb. A panicked warden screamed into the mic, "Code 19! We need backup! Make sure that nobody gets off the planet!"

"Look behind you, you're not doing a very good job of that."

A Vortian in the background was going for an escape pod. The warden whipped around, shouting "_OH NO YOU DON'T, YOU SMEET MURDERING PIECE OF-!_"

The transmission cut off into static as the warden tackled the Vortian into an open escape pod, which sealed and launched out into space.

The Tallests gaped.

"This is just _perfect._"

* * *

Ten minutes later, a drug addict was raging.

"THIS IS JUST _PERFECT!_"

The warden was becoming a serious problem. Som Tam looked up. Wherever they'd landed, it was cold and wet enough to snow, and the warden was ducking under a tree. But Doctor Tam did not care! Fuck the warden, she was her own person again!

"I'm free! I can eat whatever I want and not that gloppy stuff from prison!"

This period of joy did not last for long. "You! You ruined my life!" The warden had pulled a laser and had it pointed at her. "I just lost my career, my home, and my tranquilizers! Do you _know_ what the side effects of tranq withdrawal are? Nausea, fever, sweating-"

"Hey, wait-wait-wait- your, your thing is beeping!"

The warden rummaged through her PAK and fished out something that looked important. Huh, looks like something really was beeping.

"There's another Irken on this planet! Yes!" She aimed the gun towards Som Tam again. "South! We're going south."

"Okay, okay, I'm going!" Doctor Tam grumbled as the warden marched her along, neither of them knowing that the gun's batteries were depleted. The two began their journey south, out of Canada, and towards an angry pickle gnome named Invader Zim. And the "invader" was silent.

* * *

Reviews are appreciated! The pilot's up next, though it's, uh... it's going to be an editing nightmare. You'll see what I mean.


	3. Food Fight of Doom

Guys, guys, you're flattering me, but seriously. If I'm fucking up, and I probably am doing so somewhere, please tell me where. I do not own Invader Zim, because if I did, then all of these spiders in my house would be money.

Difference #3: Skoodge is way more involved in Welcome to Leave than he is in canon, usually by space Skype.

* * *

"And in outer spaaace, I'm gonna collect rocks from Maaars, and float in the spaaace shuttle, and I'll make friends with the spaaace monkeeey!" Melvin droned. He'd doodled a picture of himself in a space suit on the chalkboard behind him, and had written "Melvin's space adventure" beneath that.

Dib sighed and continued taking notes on Zim's behavior. He'd been going on about how Zim was an alien for a couple of days now, and nobody was changing their stance on the issue. Frustrated as he was, just throwing the claim at them without proof wouldn't do shit, despite the gullibility of his classmates. Observing, at this juncture, would be more useful.

_name- zim_

_ species- some kind of alien? (angry pickle gnome?)_

_ behavior- not v. good at hiding his alien-ness_

_doesn't do much in cla_

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK WAS THAT.

_JUST PULLED OUT A FUCKING HELMET THAT STOLE THE BRAIN OF THE KID NEXT TO HIM_

_HOLY SHIT_

Dib's brief bout of terror brought on by Zim's little field test of his organ stealing device was interrupted by the conclusion of Melvin's report. "…And that's why I wanna be an astronaut!"

Ms. Bitters slithered up to him, holding Melvin's messily colored doodle of himself as an astronaut. "Were you to actually wear the space suit that you drew yourself in for your report, Melvin, you would implode in the cold and merciless vacuum of space," she growled as the paper burned in her hand.

Zim giggled.

"Do you find something amusing, _Zim?_"

He paused. "Yes. Yes, I do. Pfft, look at his stupid space suit!" Ms. Bitters was right for once, that thing wouldn't have lasted five seconds in space.

Ms. Bitters ignored him, for she had been putting up with this bullshit since the school had hired her. Hell, they never even hired her, they had to build the school around her. "Now, does anyone have any questions?"

Dib slowly raised his hand.

"Dib, we know what you're going to ask. We all know."

Dib slowly lowered his hand.

* * *

This was going to suck.

Zim had taken quite a few rations from Conventia, mind you. Twice the amount of most invaders, in fact, as it took him a while to get to his planet. However, after six months, you start running out of food, which was the very reason that Zim had to eat an unholy government provided school lunch on that particular day.

Well, bon appe-fucking-tite.

After being relegated to an empty table due to such comments as "I eat food, just like you!" and "I HAVE A STOMACH!" it was finally time to stare death in the eye. To eat the slop, or not to eat?

At another table, Gaz was working on her cold pizza when her brother popped up. "Look at him, Gaz! He doesn't like the cafeteria food."

"I don't like it either. I must be an alien too, hi Dib!" she mocked, wiggling her fingers behind her head. "Take your meds."

Nope, never mind, he'd taken off. Not like she minded.

Zim inhaled close to the slop and gagged. Dib was rather quick to point this out. "What's the matter? Scared of beans, space boy?"

"Nonsense, I _love_ beans! _Looove_ them."

"Just one more, then. What are you scared of?" Dib said, holding out a spork.

Zim snatched the spork from his hand. "Scared? Ridiculous. Witness my bean chewing."

Dib, accompanied by Gaz, who kind of wanted to see if he'd swell up or something, watched as Zim attempted to choke down some beans.

"Now that's GOOOOD EAT-!" Zim retched and fell backwards onto the floor. "…Yummy."

Dib flopped over the table to look at Zim. The green dude had fallen over, head swollen up and leaking glowing green goo onto the floor. Dib saw this as an opportunity, seeing that most people knew that the contents of a human didn't typically glow.

"Look, everyone! His head! That is _so_ not normal! You never believed me! But now… I have _proof!_" Dib exclaimed as he pointed behind him.

Then he heard a slam and some assholes giggling.

He turned with everyone else to look at the trail of goop and the sliding cafeteria door, which had been heaved open in a hurry. Why is it a sliding door in this fanfiction? It's the setup for a joke. Just wait.

"…You're crazy!"

* * *

Zim had limped home, trailing glowing green goo behind him. Which was alright, because his few neighbors had dealt with strange happenstances even before he had moved in- and by "moved in," I mean forced his house into an unusually wide alley. Someone idly hosed the alien pus off of the street as Zim slammed the door.

"I do not like beans," he croaked before coughing more gelatinous ick onto the floor. "GIR!"

GIR got to his feet from where he'd been watching cartoons. "Yes, sir!"

"My head! It's… it's!"

"It's grotesque!"

Wait, where did he learn that? You know what, it didn't matter. "…Yes. Make it less so."

"Okee-dokie!" GIR suctioned to Zim's head, his wig having had already fallen off, sucking the pus out of there and disposing it into a bag. Within seconds, Zim's head had returned to normal size and GIR threw the bag out the window into a bush, because there was no way for him to be that helpful without some kind of catch. Zim got rid of what was left of his disguise and threw himself down the toilet, into the cockpit from earlier.

"Incoming transmission from planet Blorch," the computer said.

"Who's that? Wait. Hey, I got a base computer! That's nice." It was Skoodge, wasn't it? It had to be Skoodge. It wasn't like the slaughtering rat people would figure out how to operate a transmitter.

He answered and, sure enough, it was Skoodge, standing in what appeared to be his new base. It was about as nice as you'd assume it would be, meaning that it basically looked like a stone shack. "Heeey, Zim! You, you look nice! You been working out?"

"Skoodge, what do you want, why do you want it, and how much are you going to pay me?"

"Whaaat? Can't a guy just call an old friend for fun? Catch up on old times?" Zim wasn't impressed. "Okay, fine. I need help. How long would it take you to make a fairly large mech that looks exactly like a slaughtering rat person?"

"…A month or so. Keep going."

"Also, I need you to send me some ladies' underwear. It's really expensive here."

What in the actual fuck. Just- you know what? His personal life was his own business. "What the- okay, fine. How much are you paying me for this?"

"And I'll need you to give it a vagina. And fill it with poison."

Yeah, no. "I- _why?_ Never mind, I don't want to know," he grumbled, remembering that he was doing something else.

"Okay, you just think about it. But don't think too long, because I've got some other guy on the line who might do it. You remember Hoe Phe, right?"

"Hoe who?"

"The guy from the Vortian wedding ambush."

"He's helping you after you put his fiancée in prison?"

"Hey, he doesn't know who I am."

"I'd hate to interrupt… whatever this is, but you have a job to do, remember?" The computer boomed from a speaker.

"Yeah, I'll let you go. Who said that anyway, your ceiling?"

Right. He had a job to do. He hung up, then pulled a microphone out of the wall and ordered:

"GIR, I need you to do one last thing…"

* * *

A few hours later, after school ended, Dib was going on about how he'd failed to get anyone to notice that Zim had spontaneously inflated.

"I almost had him, Gaz," he grumbled. "It's as if dark forces are opposing me!"

"Oh, no! Dark forces! Oh wait," the girl who was brought into the world by dark forces said. "Why're you getting so worked up about this, anyway? You just gave up on stuff like the kid that looks like Bigfoot and that family of Nosfer-whatsits."

"This is different! He's invading the planet and I've already pissed him off! There's no hope of making peace _now!_"

"Good. Let him kill us."

"Good one, Gaz!" Dib snickered as Gaz gazed into the abyss, so done with her brother's shit that she was being dead serious. "But seriously, we have no idea what we're dealing with. For all we know, he's a trained mercenary, hired by soulless leaders with a plan for galactic domination!"

"Shut it, I'm trying to play Pain Piggy with some random dude I just found on the server. He sucks so much ass that he's got to be missing a few fingers."

"Did you see what that Earth food did to him?"

"Are you drinking my soda? What did I tell you about that-?"

"Something must have triggered an allergic reaction in his filthy alien body. I'll stage a food fight during lunch. There, in front of everyone, I'll launch some food into filthy mouth, and then, the whole school will see what he really is."

Underground, Zim had closed his games of Pain Piggy and QWOP, frustrated with Pain Piggy because Player 2 had kept beating him, and frustrated with QWOP because it was QWOP, to find that something useful was finally being transmitted. "Haha! The human has lost the element of surprise thanks to the ingenious listening device I placed on him."

Meanwhile, GIR giggled and waved at Gaz as her brother turned around to reveal the back of his head, and subsequently where he was holding on. Gaz briefly opened an eye, then inspected her juice box to see if there was something funny in it. "Only _then_ will his evil intestines be revealed!"

"Evil intestines? Fuck it. You know what, you might not be the strongest, or the smartest, or the sanest, or the most attractive…"

"…But?"

"Nah, that's it."

"Reveal _my_ intestines?" Zim muttered. Looks like he'd have to postpone the poisonous rat vagina. "GIR! Oh, right. I probably need to go get him later. Computer!"

"Whaaat?"

"Is the… making… stuff… room ready?"

"The lab's all done except-"

"Good enough!" Zim punched the elevator button and descended further down, into the newly finished lab. Ah, yes. The smell of chemicals and disinfectant. It was great to be back. "It's time to show the human boy the meaning of… superior being!"

The lights abruptly went out.

"I was trying to tell you the wiring wasn't done."

* * *

The next day, children ate their government provided slop, at ease. Some of them made some weird noises. One guy was choking himself with cinnamon for other people's approval. Little did they know that they should turn their eyes to the heavens and beg for mercy.

The cafeteria door slid open to let in a thing. Zim was himself, roughly. Rather, he was inside a fairly large mecha that was shaped like himself. "Heeey, how's it going? Lookin' good, Lunchy!" It walked like it shat its pants, due to having shitty leg controls, which was really going to bite him in the ass later. (If you were capable of making a giant robot, would you _really_ base its leg controls off of QWOP, of all things? At least he could get it to walk at all.)

"The weird kid looks weirder today," someone muttered.

Zim continued walking until there was a loud bang and muffled swearing from behind the cafeteria door. Everyone stopped and turned their attention toward the closed sliding door and the shouts of "fuckin' shit bitch cunt fuck" in the distance.

The door slid open to reveal Dib, with a loaded food launcher mounted on his arm, letterboxing. "Ahem. Zim!"

His sister casually walked by, grumbling, "Who the fuck tries to kick down a sliding door?"

Dib threw the textbooks he had been holding around his face on the floor and suddenly switched into attack mode, screaming and hurling a meatball at Zim. He retaliated with a force field that bounced the meatball into some other kid's eye. Someone screamed "food fight!"

Generic glop- no, food (the animators never bother to draw actual food in a food fight, luckily this is a nonvisual medium) flew through the air as Zim and Dib stared each other down, fighting in an incredibly generic manner. Dib launched food at Zim, Zim catches it and throws it back, rinse and repeat. I get really tired of writing this fight scene stuff.

"This is just between you and me, Dib human!"

"Just between you and me? I count one alien, and an entire planet of humans! It's hopeless!"

Dib started to continuously fire food at Zim, whose force started becoming caked with it.

"DANGER. DANGER. FORCE FIELD OVERLOAD."

"Must! Have! More power!" He put all of the mech's energy into its arms, the idiot, and approached Dib with a ball of glowing energy and food.

"Hey! I'm not afraid of your spooky alien death lunch! I'll follow your every move! Forever! Until the day I stop!" That's gay, bruh. Not that's there's anything wrong with that. "You picked the wrong planet to land on, Zim."

"Wait, what planet _is_ this?"

"…Earth."

"Nope. It's the right planet! HWAAAA-"

He nearly threw the gigantic ball of meat and energy at Dib, only to topple and land on his butt, in usual QWOP fashion. Bad news is, that fall damaged the energy tank in the suit's booty. I told you QWOP would bite him in the ass. "DANGER. DANGER. ORGANIC MATERIAL MAGNET OVERLOAD. DRAWING ENERGY FROM SURROUNDING MATERIALS…"

Food and children flew toward him, sticking to the mech. "What the- mayday! Mayday! The children…! They cover me! The coming invasion… will not be stopped… by your… Doritos!" Yeah, yeah, I know it said burritos in the actual pilot, but see, there's this thing in the Halloween episode. Like, he gets beaten up by some kids dressed up as Bill Cipher and Captain America and Peridot, and he's just like "foiled by Doritos again." It'll be really funny. Sorry, back to the story.

Dib grinned, turned to his classmates. "Invasion! He said invasion! See, he is an alien!"

"Shut the fuck up, nobody cares!"

Dib stared off into space. He popped open a panel on his arm cannon, then re-aimed it at Zim. Zim made a mental note to make peace with whatever gods that might be out there, for that would be the moment that they died.

The backpack that stored the food Dib was launching suddenly sparked as an abundance of chips traveled through a tube. The hail of broken Doritos sailed from the cannon and directly above Dib, mercilessly about to shred everything in sight. "Beans!" A girl screamed, despite those not being beans in the slightest due to editing.

The Doritos came down on the cafeteria, ruining everything. Everything was crunchy and covered in chips. The door slammed open and Ms. Bitters stood in the doorway. She snarled, about to say something, only to be cut off by the whole school simultaneously pointing at Dib.

Hours later, Dib was still in Ms. Bitters' class, writing "Zim is not an alien" over and over. Also, there were fun little things like "does anyone even do this anymore" or "yes he is" or "my hand is about to fall off."

"I was so close! So close to finally getting to the bottom!"

Ms. Bitters slithered up to him. "I don't want to hear another peep out of you! You children and all of your _peeping!_" She left, going to get coffee again.

Zim flew up to the window. "Peep!"

Well, so much for that coffee.

* * *

Hoo, boy! I put that off until the last minute. …After the last minute, technically. If you want to help me make hazmat suits for dealing with giant spiders, please read and review later chapters, and if you don't want to… well, it's your life, but it just seems silly to me to deny yourself like that. See you.


End file.
